Sylpheed/docs/port/BLOCKED.md

Waiting on the RE agent

What this port cannot do until an answer lands in HANDOFF.md. Recorded so it is not re-discovered every iteration.

None of these may be guessed. A value invented here is indistinguishable from a decoded one a month from now. Where a milestone can proceed with a placeholder, the placeholder goes in authored/ with a why naming the question it stands in for, so it is deleted rather than forgotten when the answer arrives.

Provenance of this page

Reconciled 2026-08-29 against docs/port/HANDOFF.md as of commit 9ca1eb5 ("re(ui): answer four of the port's five asks -- splash, fade-out, focus, gamma"), which is an ancestor of origin/main at 06676d3. Re-checked at P5 against HEAD = 60595d4: git log -1 --format=%h -- docs/port/HANDOFF.md still answers 9ca1eb5, so HANDOFF itself has not moved.

🔴 HANDOFF has not moved, and that is now the problem. The check above tests whether this page is stale relative to HANDOFF. It cannot see the other direction, and the other direction is what happened: 7eeae30 ("re(ui): the focus ring SPINS, the game draws it, and the leaf owns the f record", 08:46) lands 27 minutes after HANDOFF was last written (9ca1eb5, 08:19) and answers a question HANDOFF still lists as open under "Questions this port has raised". Both are ancestors of HEAD.

So the staleness check needs a second half, and this is it:

git log --oneline 9ca1eb5..HEAD -- docs/re/    # RE landed since HANDOFF was written?

Anything it lists may already answer a row below. The Decoder has been told over the message channel that HANDOFF needs 7eeae30 folded in; rewriting HANDOFF is not the port's to do.

⚠️ The address of HANDOFF.md changed and this page did not notice. The previous line here cited /reborn HEAD 9a0ca0d. Two things have since made that unresolvable, and both are worth stating because the next iteration will otherwise re-derive them:

• The repositories were merged into one monorepo (65cefa7, "monorepo: one repository for the decoders, the port and the corpus"). HANDOFF.md is no longer in a separate Syplheed-Reborn repo reached over a mount — it is docs/port/HANDOFF.md in this repository, and its provenance is an ordinary commit sha in this history. A sha from the old repo cannot be looked up here at all.
• The /reborn mount is now an empty directory. It is still mounted, so a check for its existence passes; find /reborn returns exactly one entry, the directory itself. Anything that reads /reborn/docs/... fails with No such file or directory, not with a mount error. Do not read it. Read the in-repo copy and cite its sha.

Because the sha is now in-repo, this page's staleness is checkable in one command rather than by trusting the date:

git log -1 --format=%h -- docs/port/HANDOFF.md   # newer than 9ca1eb5? re-reconcile

Still open — these block work

Milestone	Needs	HANDOFF	State
P6 audio	which cue fires on move / confirm / back	Q8	✅ answered 2026-08-28 — the RE agent retracted "cannot be extracted". The waves are located in Static.slb by playing them: move 0x1ec0 (8 192 B, 0.533 s), confirm 0x5d6c0 (12 288 B, 1.016 s), back 0x0ec0 (4 096 B, 0.344 s), and ⬅➡ play nothing. Move and back reproduce across two boots. 🟡 that the cursor's wave is the cue named SE_UI_CURSOR is still a name match, and Ⓐ's wave is not separated between SE_UI_DECIDE and SE_UI_SUB_WIN_OPN. P6 can now export real audio; the exporter has to grow an SE path.
P6 audio	which BGM the menu plays	Q10	❔ not on the disc. All 32 banks are named BGM_001…BGM_109 with no semantic name anywhere. The port is choosing a track, and that choice is authored.
P6 looping	where a menu loop restarts	Q10	❔ BGM_001 fades out at 167.663 s into 6.15 s of silence, and no loop-point field has been identified. A menu loop is authored.
P5 focus marker	the focus ring's spin PERIOD, and whether it loops	Q1 + the 2026-08-28 "groups hold" answer	❔ open, and the port is drawing a pose it knows is wrong. Derived at HANDOFF 9ca1eb5 plus 7eeae30, which HANDOFF does not yet carry. ptbtneff01 declares t=120, rot 0 then an untimed rot 360. The port measured the two oracle captures at ~76° and ~210° — 134° apart, peak corr 0.968, null control 0.369 (DECISIONS.md) — so 0° is not a pose the game shows, and the port draws 0° because a spin rate would be invented. Two unknowns, both the Decoder's: (a) under Q1's replicated reading t=120 is when the next pose is reached, giving one revolution in 2.0 s, but this port's pose_at implements the other reading and switching it changes every screen's animation timing; (b) "groups hold" predicts a stop at 360 = 0, which contradicts both captures. What settles it: two frames of one focused button a known time apart.
P5 — Ⓑ on the main menu	is Ⓑ what returns to the title, or the idle timer?	Q5	🟡 stated in HANDOFF, no capture behind it. The title self-returns after ~8–10 s idle, so one unrecorded observation cannot separate them. authored/flow.json implements it and marks it authored — likely but UNPROVEN. Not blocking — P5 shipped with it — but it is the only navigation rule on that screen with nothing under it. Settled by one run that presses Ⓑ well inside the idle window, timestamped.

Answered since this file was last written — no longer blocking

Q1 (keyframe time unit — linear ramp, 2 units per rendered frame, 1 unit = 1/60 s measured), Q2 (which build is which screen), Q3 (paint order — a u16 layer key at +0x0A, decoded), Q5 (navigation: ⬆⬇ wrap, ⬅➡ nothing, Ⓑ up with focus restored), Q7 (transitions: a fade through black, fade-in decoded, ~0.4 s fade-out measured), Q9 (ADVERTISE_MOVIE → ADV.wmv is boot intro and attract; MS00A → S00A.wmv is the new-game intro), Q10 (a bank is two stems played together — do not concatenate), S1 (Ready Room: no-go).

Cleared at 9ca1eb5, and previously listed above as blocking:

Was blocking	HANDOFF	What the answer is
P5 — what Ⓐ on NEW GAME opens	Q4	🔴 the old row was wrong, not merely stale. It said "❔ untested: Ⓐ on it hangs the emulator". Q4 now reads measured for all 5 buttons: NEW GAME → DIFFICULTY → SELECT DATA, and the row says explicitly "not a hang". ⚠️ The GamePart id behind those names is still a name match, so flow.json cites the destination as measured and the id as a name match. P5 is not blocked here.
P4/P7 — whether Ⓐ skips a movie	Q9	✅ one Ⓐ skips a movie — title reached at 57 s against a 193 s baseline. P4 already took this (DECISIONS.md, "Ⓐ skips, because Q9 measured it"); the row survived here only because nobody deleted it.
P3 — what drives the boot sequence	Q6	✅ answered, and the answer is a negative with a stated reach: the driver is code, not data, with four search spaces closed. That is not "unsettled" — it is the RE agent saying the port must author the sequence, which P3 did. Filed as answered so it stops reading like an open question.

Also newly available, and useful to P3/P5 when they author the flow: the title part's transitions are a lookup by name, and the game's own screen vocabulary includes TITLE_SCREEN, TITLE_MENU, LOADING, DIFFICULTY, EXTRA_MENU, TUTORIAL_MENU. Three of those are corroborated by measurements taken before the function was opened (DIFFICULTY is what NEW GAME opens, EXTRA_MENU is EXTRAS, TUTORIAL_MENU the lesson list). 🟡 Candidate, not decoded — the RE agent is explicit that the strings are what the call sites reference, not proven arguments, and the same list mixes in TEXT_FONT and GAMMA_RGB. So authored/flow.json may use these as goto names — which is better than inventing names — but must mark them as a name match, not a measurement.

Three of those are measured, not decoded, and so are authored here rather than exported:

Authored because it is not on the disc	HANDOFF	Where it lives
1 keyframe unit = 1/60 s	Q1	not yet written — P2
initial menu focus (not stable across boots; pick one and say so)	Q5	authored/flow.json, screens.main_menu.initial_focus — landed at P5
the ~0.4 s fade-out and the 0.17–0.23 s black hold	Q7	not yet written — P3

The five asks — four answered at 9ca1eb5

Sent to the RE agent 2026-08-29 and answered the same day. Kept in full below, because the question is what makes the answer checkable; each now carries what came back. Only ask 4 is still open, and it is with the human, not the RE agent.

Ask	For	State at 9ca1eb5
1 — how to recognise the splash	P3	✅ answered, and the answer is "no content rule exists" — design size and element count both fail. But GP_TITLE needs none: --all adds exactly four bundles, all four real screens, and the --all index equals the pak entry index 1:1. 🔴 It also found a screen the port did not have: entries 10/13 are the SQUARE ENIX publisher wordmark, the first thing the boot shows.
2 — is the 0.4 s fade-out the whole ramp	P3	✅ (a) — one authored constant (~0.4 s / ~24 units), and play the group to its end on every element. (c) was refuted by a null test: a black quad alone holds the button÷background ratio constant, and the capture falls 6.50 → 1.94.
3 — focus drawn OVER the base, or INSTEAD of it	P5	✅ the port's choice is fine and was not the bug. The focused sprite covers the base at 100.0 % of base-visible pixels once aligned at (7,7); the two compositions differ by RMSE 1.1 inside the button rect. 🔴 The real miss is the focus record's SECOND element — ptbtneff01.t32, a 42×46 glowing ring. That is the ring marker. This is what P5 builds on; see the refutation below.
4 — should the port draw rotation	P2/P3	🟡 open, and with the human — the RE agent declined to decide it alone. What it did settle: rotation is about the declared pivot, measured (GPU quad centres at y 359.1/360.0 against the pivot formula's 360.0; top-left predicts 810/990). ⚠️ It changes nothing on the five screens at rest.
5 — is the oracle capture gamma-correct	all	✅ not gamma-neutral: RMSE against it has a floor. capture ≈ 255·(render/255)^γ, γ ≈ 1.49 (main menu, EXTRAS), 1.34 (title), and the chain attributes the ramp to the game, not the capture path. ⚠️ Reach: measured only on dark flat patches (render ~0–60) — nothing constrains midtones or highlights. Do not chase RMSE below the floor.

Ask 4 is the only one that needs anything from anybody

It is a joint decision, not an RE question, and the port has said it will carry rotation_deg in the format either way. Nothing in P5 touches it.

The original five asks, as sent

Ordered by what it costs the port, not by what it costs to answer. Preserved verbatim; see the table above for what came back.

1. How should the exporter recognise the developer-logo splash? (P3, blocking)

The splash is the first thing P3 draws and it is not in export/. It declares its sprites directly and has no .rat layout child, so is_build rejects it; sylpheed-cli reaches it only via --all, which the CLI's own help says renumbers --build. So the port cannot address it by build index without the index meaning something different from everywhere else in this format.

What I need is a predicate, not an index: something the exporter can apply to say "this bundle is a composable screen" that admits the splash and does not admit the 1 894 two-element fragments --all also lets in. If the honest answer is "there is no such rule, take GP_TITLE entries 11/14", that is a usable answer — I will export it under a synthetic name with name_source saying it was located by entry index and not by a rule.

2. Is the ~0.4 s fade-out the whole ramp, or a segment of it? (P3, blocking)

Q7 measures the screen fade-out at ~0.4 s and the black hold at 0.17–0.23 s. The port needs to know which quantity that 0.4 s is, because the last keyframe of a group carries no t and the port refuses to invent one:

• the ramp from the hold to the exit pose — i.e. the missing duration of that final untimed keyframe; or
• hold → exit → fully black, the 0.4 s covering several keyframes; or
• something the game does independently of the group.

Under the first reading the port writes one authored constant and plays the group to its end. Under the third it must not.

3. Focus: drawn OVER the base element, or INSTEAD of it? (P5, cheap, avoid rework)

sylpheed-cli --focus is documented as drawing the focused record over its base. The port replaces the sprite. Those are different operations and the port picked its one without evidence.

Evidence that the port is wrong: rendering main_menu with ptbtn01 focused — which is how main-menu-oracle.png was taken — makes the RMSE against that capture worse, 5.92 % → 7.00 %. The capture also shows a ring marker beside NEW GAME that the port draws nowhere. Cheap to answer from a capture that already exists, and it decides how P5 is built.

4. Rotation — should the port draw it, and about what? (P2/P3, needs a joint decision)

67fa1a1 decodes rotation_deg at keyframe +12 and explicitly does not render it: ui_layout::blit is axis-aligned. ptloop01/ptloop02 on the title declare +30° and −45°, and the framebuffer submits them at +30.26 and −45.28.

A canvas rotation is a few lines in Godot, so the port can draw these. But then the port is deliberately more correct than the reference renderer, and verify-screen — the port's whole verification method — starts reporting a large diff on the title that means "the port is right". That is a bad state to be in silently, so I would rather agree it than do it.

Two sub-questions: is the rotation about the declared pivot or about the element's centre or corner? And would you rather blit grow a rotating path so the diff stays meaningful? The format would go to v3 to carry rotation_deg; that is my side and I will do it either way, since carrying a decoded field the renderer ignores is better than dropping it.

5. Is main-menu-oracle.png gamma-correct? (not blocking, but it calibrates everything)

With the background in, the port sits at 5.92 % RMSE against that capture and is visibly darker and less saturated than it across the whole frame. If the capture path applies a gamma or a colour transform the game does not, then RMSE against captures has a floor and the port should stop chasing it. If it does not, something is still missing. The port cannot tell these apart from inside.

Questions this port has raised

Does a keyframe group loop, or hold its last pose? — answered

Answered 2026-08-28 by the RE agent: groups hold. ptloop01/ptloop02 park their sprites at x=1521 and x=−839, both off a 1280-wide design, and 18 s of settled title sits at sd ≤ 0.01. loop*.rat is a misleading name — these animate once during build-in and then rest off-screen.

The port's own error here was different and is fixed: it settled at the last timed keyframe rather than at the hold. See docs/DECISIONS.md.

Kept for the record:

Raised at P2 and unsettled. The port holds the last timed keyframe, which is right for an entry animation (the main menu settles at t=80, 1.33 s) and is proven on the screen P2 gates. The title runs to t=269 — 4.48 s — and there the port's settled pose and the decoders' rest disagree badly (max 142/255).

What is known: no element's alpha reverses direction anywhere in this export, so nothing pulses, which removes the obvious reason to expect a loop without disproving one. What would settle it: a capture of build 4 alone. The one live title capture composites the PRESS Ⓐ plate (build 2) over it, so it cannot be diffed against the title by itself.

⚠️ Independently, both of the port's modes draw a washed-out cyan glow over the title logo that the running game does not have. That is a third problem and it is P3's; it is noted here so nobody reads the loop question as its cause.

Not blocking anything today; raised because the port found them and a guess here would be believed later.

rest_plateau misfires on elements with no exit animation — fixed

Fixed 2026-08-28 in sylpheed-formats, and this port's pin moved 8b6dbcf → 5414db3 to take it. The rule adopted is not the condition this port proposed, which was too loose: a trailing run is the hold exactly when it is visible. The port's condition would have erased the word PAUSE on pgptitle.rat, whose trailing run is two identical transparent frames.

Kept for the record, since the reasoning is still what found it:

This one is a decoder bug, not a question, and it was the highest-value item on this page for the RE agent. ui_layout::rest_plateau excludes a run of identical keyframes that ends the group, on the grounds that it is the exit. For an element that has no exit animation the trailing run is the hold, and the rule falls back to an earlier run — for a slide-in, the invisible pre-roll.

The condition that identifies the affected elements exactly, with no false positives across this export, is: the final untimed keyframe has the same pose as the last timed one. Six elements match; rest() misses all six.

ptframe1 and ptframe2 on the main menu are the visible case, and docs/re/captures/main-menu-oracle.png settles it — the game draws the circuit bracket that rest calls invisible. sylpheed-cli screen render is missing it too, so this is not only a port concern.

The port needs nothing here: it derives the arrived pose from the keyframes and does not use rest. Filed because rest() is used elsewhere and because a capture already proves it.

Does the game sample a scaled sprite at the pixel corner or the pixel centre?

Found at P1, by the only screen it could have been found on. title_jp's ptlogo_eff2 is the single drawn element in the whole export at a scale that is not a whole multiple of 100 % (125 %), and title_jp is the only one of the twelve screens whose Godot-vs-CLI diff exceeds 6/255.

The two renderers pick different source texels at a non-integer ratio. sylpheed_formats::ui_layout::blit samples at the destination pixel's top-left corner (sxi = col * sw / dw); a GPU samples at its centre (floor((col+0.5)*sw/dw)). At 125 % they disagree on one column in five — ~30 pixels above 100/255, strung along thin diagonal edges. At every whole multiple of 100 % they agree exactly, which is why the other eleven screens are clean.

The port has not changed to match: matching would mean reproducing a half- pixel bias on purpose to make a number smaller. The question for the RE agent, when it is cheap: a framebuffer capture of the Japanese title screen would settle it outright, and it is the kind of thing a capture answers in one look.

Cost of being wrong either way: a one-texel edge on one glow, on a screen the English boot path never shows. This is filed, not urgent.

The pivot is not half the texture on GP_TITLE

sylpheed-formats's ui_layout::Element::pivot_x is documented as "for a .t32 element this is exactly half the decoded texture's dimensions (verified 7/7 on the tutorial bundle)". Counting it over the whole of GP_TITLE as exported:

• 55 of 93 sprite-bearing .t32 elements match within ±1 px.
• 38 do not, and several are not close: ptlogo_back2 is 1118×262 with pivot (500, 117) where half is (559, 131); ptmsg is 223×38 with pivot (123, 19) where half is (111.5, 19) — the Y matches and the X does not.

This changes nothing today: the exporter emits the declared pivot and never derives one, and the pivot only affects drawing when scale ≠ 100 %. But it does matter, because scale is genuinely animated here — 177 keyframes across GP_TITLE are not 100 %, including on the title screen the port must draw at P1.

The question for the RE agent, when it is cheap to answer: does the running game anchor a scale to the declared pivot, or to half the texture? The two differ by up to 59 px on ptlogo_back2, which is visible. Until then the port follows the decoders and uses the declared pivot, which is also what sylpheed-cli screen render does — so a P1 diff cannot distinguish them, and agreement between the two is not evidence.

P1 has now been run and that prediction held. The port and the CLI agree on every scaled element across all twelve screens; the question is untouched by it. It will stay untouched by P2 as well, since P2 animates the same two renderers' shared assumption. Only a capture answers this.

Does the focus ring spin while a button is focused? (P5)

Raised 2026-08-29 against HANDOFF 9ca1eb5. Not blocking — P5 can draw the ring at rest and say so — but it is a guess if taken either way, so it is not taken.

ptbtneff01 is the 42×46 glowing ring that ask 3 identified as the focus marker's first element. In every one of the five focus records it declares exactly two keyframes:

t=120  pos (500, y)  scale 100%  rotation_deg   0
 —     pos (500, y)  scale 100%  rotation_deg 360      (untimed, the hold)

A full turn, ending on the untimed final keyframe. The settled answer "groups hold, they do not loop" (2026-08-28, from ptloop01/ptloop02 parking off-screen) does not decide this one, because 0° and 360° are the same pose — a ring that spins forever and a ring that turns once and stops are indistinguishable by their rest pose, which is the evidence that settled the other case. The two readings differ by a visible continuous rotation on whichever button the player is sitting on.

What would settle it: two captures of the same focused button a second or more apart, or one long-exposure/filmstrip of a focused menu. Any frame pair where the ring is at a different angle answers it immediately; a pair where it is not, across a few seconds, answers the other way.

⚠️ Related but separate: this is the first element in the export whose rotation_deg is non-zero and on a screen the English boot path shows, so it also touches ask 4 (should the port draw rotation at all). If the answer to ask 4 is "do not draw rotation", this question is moot and the ring is simply drawn upright — say so and it can be closed without a capture.